


The Divide

by bakers_impala221



Series: Division [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Acceptance, Anxiety, Bisexuality, Coming Out, Crush, Depression, Eventual Romance, FTM, First Meeting, Friendship, Gay, Gay Sherlock, Greg Lestrade - Freeform, High School AU, Irene Adler - Freeform, John Watson - Freeform, Johnlock - Freeform, Kindness, LGBTQI, Lesbian Irene Adler, M/M, Molly Hooper - Freeform, Not Much Drama, Outsider - Freeform, Remix, Rewrite, Romance, School crush, Sensory Overload, Sherlock Holmes - Freeform, Social Anxiety, Teen AU, Teenlock, Trans, coming out publically, friendliness, happiness, holmes - Freeform, home groups, no bullying, outcast, sort of brief reference to misunderstanding of homophobia, terrible class, watson - Freeform, you'll understand what I mean when you get to it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-21 08:42:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19999084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bakers_impala221/pseuds/bakers_impala221
Summary: Sherlock has a secret no one can know. But it's tiring beyond understanding, and the weight is far too much to bear. When the new home group teacher tells the class to sort themselves into two, Sherlock faces a decision on whether or not to reveal that secret. But now a year-long crush, John Watson, is watching, and that might just change everything.





	The Divide

**Author's Note:**

> So, you may or may not know this, but this is pretty much an exact copy of the Destiel version of this story by the title 'Divide.' Because I don't know how to leave links here, I've made it into a series, so if you're more interested in Destiel, check that one out by following the link to the series below the tags.  
> Of course, you may wish to read both, which of course as the writer I encourage, but the only differences between them are the character names/characterisation and the phrasing of some of the lines. Ultimately, they are the same story.
> 
> Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy!

With the heaviness of my books weighing down my right arm, I walked with head bowed and my eyes fixated on my feet as they stepped in through the door. Without looking up more than once to scan for empty seats, I crossed the floor, beelining my way over to the only empty chair left in the room. My heart sank as I lowered myself into the front-row chair, positioned at the end of the row, placed inconveniently in the dead-centre of the room. The skin on the back of my neck prickled with anxiety as I could feel the stares of twenty or so kids on me as they either talked amongst themselves or looked up expectantly at the teacher.

I kept my eyes trained forward, ignoring the thrumming through my legs, the unconscious tension in them, my heart beat knocking in my ears at a rate just too fast for normalcy, and the delusion of every eye gazing on me and watching me with a knowing scrutiny they couldn’t possibly have.

After two minutes, that in me resembled the entire imminent year, the teacher spoke and I could feel the misconstrued gazes move away and redirect themselves to the speaker. She introduced herself with vexatious enthusiasm, and I silently sighed to myself both in relief and disappointment as she continued her overly eager speech, which resonated in stark contrast to the darkness slowly filling the crevices in my mind.

I zoned in and out intermittently, alternating focus between the dark, shallow thoughts and the light, high-pitched voice of the woman on stage. I gathered the occasional phrases; how the school had introduced a home group system that year; how she was to be the manager of our class; that she was to explain the function and layout of the new class during this session.

When I looked back up again, she had moved to the back of the room and begun calling out names from the role. My heart somehow sunk and raced simultaneously as I awaited the impending catastrophe with my arms wrapped tightly around the books on the table, a sharp corner of a textbook biting sharply into my forearm.

Then she got to that name: ‘Uh- Sheryl?’ she called, looking up expectantly with a smile. I opened my mouth, praying for my throat not to close up, and my voice to remain strong enough to be heard, and I called out a reply, an awkward soft and hesitant sound that made me want to bury my face into my arms and melt away into the floor.

But then she’d moved onto the next name and the tension eased slowly out of my shoulders, and the roaring in my ears dulled to a minimum, and I allowed myself to glance casually to the wall to my left to inspect the class out of the peripheral of my vision. No one was watching me; no one cared.

I let out a breath and sunk back a little in my seat, allowing the pain in my back to settle a bit as the backrest took over some of the tension in it.

The class dragged on; the teacher -Ms Angie- had had to yell twice to end the roar of disruptive discussion, and then would continue by speaking of awful, boring things, like getting to know people better (I’d rolled my eyes discernibly, unable to keep from doing so-- as _if_ I hadn’t gotten to know this class in the two years I’d been forced into it; the thought of being pushed back into it for another year, even if only for once a week, made my stomach churn unpleasantly).

All of a sudden, people were standing up and she was sorting us into groups. I glanced over at the people in the row of desks with me-- homophobes; judgemental people. I begged silently to not be sorted with them. When she’d started to gesture at them to become a group, I shifted subtly away and more towards whatever group of people were behind me, of whom I didn’t dare turn to inspect. I heard a low chuckle and I prayed that they would be kind and allow me into their group; I didn’t think anyone would want me among them, but perhaps they would be respectful enough not to flat-out refuse.

Then Ms. Angie turned towards me, a smile decorated across her face. I swallowed thickly and kept my eyes away from the other students, but subtly turned my head to my right in the hope that it would influence her into sorting me with whatever group of people it was who stood there.

She spoke unheard words and drew a circle in the air with her arm, encompassing myself and whoever it was who sat together behind me, and I let out a breath of relief. I picked up my books deliberately and turned very slowly, eyes downcast to the floor as I deposited them onto the group of desks pushed together into a rectangle. Without glancing up once, I turned back and dragged my former chair over to the edge of the tables and sat in it quietly, unwilling to meet the eyes of the surely uninviting party I’d been pushed into.

The teacher moved on away from the group, and I lifted up my hands and pulled the school books to the edge of the desk in attempt to take up no more room than absolutely necessary, loathe to inconvenience them any more than it was possible to avoid. One of the people at the table coughed and then spoke to a friend, and my mind wandered.

I looked up to the perimeter of the table and watched the bodies sitting around it without seeing their faces. I vaguely wondered what they would say if they knew things I did. Whether they’d still leave me alone here, begrudgingly accepting the misfit at the table-- just for the moment, or if they’d make me leave; demand the teacher move me into another group, only for me then to be rejected by every other person successively. I wondered then if the word would spread like disease; a contagious rumour passing in whispers until everyone around me knew, and I’d be forced to live out life here day by day, avoided by anyone and everyone, looking down as I passed them to blur out their disgusted glares as they watched me. Eventually, I’d have to leave entirely; evicted by the cold malice of their judgment, and passed on into a new world of blackness, where it would all inevitably start over again--

I felt a firm hand on my shoulder before I heard the voice. The steady strength in it grounding me and pulling me back from my shadows. I looked up, the last remnants of voices fading away, whispering from the back of my mind “ _they can never know…”_ The arm shook me again, ever so slightly, and I blinked, refocusing on the person attached to me. I smiled politely, hoping nothing in my expression gave me away too badly.

They smiled back, a strange, charming smile, ‘hey,’ they said, eyes crinkling and teeth shining bright. It was comfortingly genuine. I looked back down.

‘I’m John,’ they continued. My eyes snapped back up within an instant. _Shit,_ I thought quickly. _Shit shit shit_.

‘I don’t think we’ve met before,’ he said, his left arm rising to bring his hand to his chest. ‘I’m John Watson, this is my friend Greg, this is Molly, and this is Irene,’ he turned his head to look at them each in turn, and they greeted me each respectively -Greg with a nod, Molly with a wave, and Irene with a rather flirtatious smile.

I regarded them each in turn, a little dizzy.

‘And you’re…’ he continued, my stomach dropped in dread, ‘Sheryl. Right?’

I nodded again, heart hammering, and confused. My vision blurred a little as a squinted inquiringly. ‘Yes… how do you know?’

He chuckled nervously and I watched as this time his brought his hand to supposedly brush his hair out of his face -failing, as it was successfully gelled into position above his forehead. ‘I uh-- I heard the role call before.’

My eyes flicked to his friend’s, watching him with a curious gaze. My eyebrows burrowed, and Greg’s gaze switched over to me briefly before catching himself and turning around to join back into the conversation between the table’s other occupants.

Neutralising my expression to apathy again, I looked towards John’s right hand, still planted firmly on my forearm. I spoke quietly, ‘… right.’

He followed my gaze in curiousity until his saw his own hand, and he lifted it again slowly to shift it back over to the desk to clasp his other one tightly. He leaned forward in his chair to readjust himself a bit before turning back to me, his smile bright again.

‘So,’ he began, ‘excited for the new semester?’

‘No,’ I said shortly.

He laughed empathatically, amused. ‘Yeah… me neither,’ he said, he looked over to his friend, then back to me. ‘It’s only my second year here,’ he said conversationally.

I nodded. _I know_ , I thought, noticing again that my heart rate was a little higher than it should have been.

‘How long have you been here?’ he asked casually, leaning over with his shoulder as if to nudge me into conversation.

I looked down to glare at the table. ‘Forever,’ I replied grimly.

‘All four years? Have you been in this class before?’ he asked, glancing around at the rest of the students, yelling at each other and laughing far too loudly.

‘Yes, for every subject for the first three.’ I said quietly.

‘Mm,’ he nodded empathetically. ‘Can’t imagine how that would have been.’

 _Horrible,_ I wanted to say. I looked around at the people that filled up the classroom to the brim. _It was_ so _bad I would walk into the classroom and want to die._ My chest went hollow and my lungs abruptly lost their oxygen. _I would feel this emptiness fill me up and my thoughts would go bitter and cold, and everything was so bad I could feel myself drowning silently in the sound, and--_

‘You okay?’ he asked, leaning forwards a bit towards me, pulling me once again from my thoughts.

I smiled tightly, unable to look at him, and I looked back down at my hands. _This was a bad idea_ , I thought. _I can’t… I can’t talk to him, especially not about this. I can’t ruin his life with problems. I can’t ruin his life with this shit. I can’t take that smile from him, can’t watch his face fill with disgust or his eyes fill with horror, and I can’t watch him leave. I can’t; I can’t and I won’t._

I could see John moving around in my peripheral vision, and I wanted to talk with him, I wanted to tell him everything; I wanted him to be my friend-- I wanted him. But I forced myself not to. I didn’t speak again.

When the teacher finally spoke, I didn’t raise my eyes up from the table. I listened past the low humming in my head to vaguely hear her explain the proceeding activity, without processing a word. Then she walked over to our table and put a thin stack of white paper between us.

As she left, I reached out absentmindedly to slide one slowly over to myself, keeping my eyes deliberately on the paper reflecting bright white light from the sun and the lights overhead. When it was close enough to examine, I scanned over it apathetically, the noise in my head intensifying. I tried reading over the writing, but found I couldn’t hear my inner speech over the sound.

I tried again-- but I still couldn’t hear anything.

I huffed out a breath. The white static noise suddenly turned into ringing and drowned out everything besides one voice, and it whispered softly yet broke through the tinnitus with ease. I wanted to bury my face in my hands, or knock my head until it broke, but I knew it wouldn’t stop. I wanted to scream, but became vaguely aware of the people around me, and found I couldn’t because of that.

Then I noticed that my eyes were still open, glaring down at the paper like it had somehow offended me. I focused in on that; on the whiteness beneath my eyes, on the black lines covered over it; on the mild burning sensation from the white glow of the sunlight as it reflected off of the paper. And then I focused in on the sound around me-- the real hum of voices and laughter, on the sound of the wind whispering past the trees and rustling their leaves. I zeroed in on the sound of laughter to my left. A deep, rumbling sound I’d somehow learned to admire from afar.

I looked up to my left, and for a moment my eyes couldn’t adjust to the light from outside, and it panned out around the silhouette of the source of laughter like a spotlight shone from behind a model in a photo shoot. Then the light dimmed as my eyes focused, and the green eyes met mine, sparkling in the sunshine like emeralds. Time seemed to stop, and I felt transfixed and frozen, as if his gaze had me pinned to the spot.

Eventually the eye contact gotten too much, and I looked away to my hands, coughing quietly and willing my heart to settle. When I looked back up, John had turned away to Greg, discussing something lightly between them. Then I looked across the table at Irene and noticed the paper scrunched up between her hands.

‘I’m guessing you’re not going to complete that.’ I asked, vaguely uninterested, gesturing to the paper in her hands.

She looked at me, ‘well, Sheryl,’ she purred lightly, ‘no. I happen to have many better ways to spend my time.’ She set the ball of paper down on the desk and began twirling it around with her finger to emphasise the point.

I nodded, not willing to engage in a debate over something so trivial. I suddenly felt John’s eyes bear sharply into me and when I gazed back up at him again, he spoke.

‘Irene’s always like that. She’s probably the complete opposite of Harry,’ he said, chuckling a little at the thought as he looked over at her.

I glanced between John and Irene, well under the impression that I was missing something important, seeing as I was unable to make the connection that the rest of the table seemed to have understood instinctively.

Squinting subtly, letting my eyes dart across the table and between each person for some kind of clue, before cutting through their intuitively shared silence. ‘Your brother?’ I inquired, cocking an eyebrow.

John looked back at me, a little dazed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Why do you say that?’

I nodded towards his pencil case. His gaze followed mine to the faded black writing which adorned the rather worn material of the implement. Despite its age, the letters still rather clearly resembled the word “Harry.”

John nodded, turning back to face me when he said. ‘Actually, she’s my sister. She and Irene have been dating for a few months now. I never saw it coming.’

Unwillingly, I blanched subtly in shock. ‘You’re sister?’ I spluttered out embarrassingly inelegantly.

John frowned, glancing briefly over to Irene then back at me. ‘Yeah? What’s wrong with that?’

I looked over at Irene, who seemed almost dangerously ready to pounce. Then at John again. I waved them off. ‘Oh, don’t be like that. I’m just never wrong,’ I said a little more flippantly then I’d intended.

John scoffed. ‘They did say you were a smart-ass,’ he said, his voice full of mirth -enough to set the relaxed mood back into position.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Irene relax into an idiosyncratically elegant pose on the chair and smirk predatorily. ‘Before he caught us together, Watson here thought I’d been after him. You should have seen the look of surprise on his face when he caught Harry and me making out in her bedroom.’

When I looked over at him, John’s face had turned a light shade of pink. He chuckled nervously. ‘In my defence,’ he said, holding up his hands, ‘I hadn’t even noticed you even knew each other. And it’s not like you’ve got an innocent reputation ‘round here.’

‘Well, you know Johnny, what can I say? Your sister is _hot_ \-- oi!’ She yelped softly as John’s worn pencil case flew across the table in her direction.

Once Irene had thrown the pencil case, rather aggressively, back (only narrowly missing me), and turned back to resume twirling the paper around the table semi-provocatively, John focused his attention back on me.

‘So, I was wondering… would you like to work together on this thing, or…?’ he asked, seemingly flustered. ‘It’s up to you, I just…’

Glancing down at the sheet, I cut him off. ‘I wasn’t listening to the instructions earlier.’

‘Oh, that’s okay, I can just show you,’ he said with a wink.

Stunned into place, I didn’t move, glancing away nervously.

‘Take it easy, mate,’ Greg said, leaning forward into the small conversation. He smiled at me knowingly, before looking back over at his friend. ‘The girl barely knows you.’

John reached up behind him to brush the back of his neck while my stomach dropped viciously to the floor. I looked back down at my hands and the sounds around me began to fade out slightly underneath a low buzzing noise.

‘Hey,’ I could hear John shifting in his seat beside me. I lifted my head to indicate I was listening, but kept my eyes trained on the desk. ‘Sorry if I’m coming on a bit strong,’ he said apologetically.

I shook my head, ‘it’s fine. Doesn’t matter,’ I said curtly.

He exhaled loudly. ‘Really?’ he asked, sounding skeptical.

‘Really’ I said, my voice flat; too tired to worry about how he’d interpreted it.

When Ms Angie had come back to collect the sheets from us, she smiled brightly again and addressed them all before continuing.

‘Well, for our next activity, I’d like you all to stand up once again,’ she said cheerily.

My arm dropped in front of me onto the desk in exhaustion and I stood up reluctantly from the chair.

Looking as if she was on the verge of bursting into celebration and applause, the teacher explained the next task enthusiastically. Using her arms to gesture to each wall, she explained loudly, ‘so, for this next activity, I’d like it if all girls in the room moved to my left, and all the boys to the right.’

For a moment, time literally stopped, and white-hot panic shot through me. I felt sick to the gut, as if I’d just run a marathon. Time resumed once more and I could see the room divide into two sections around me, and I felt frozen, so all I could do was watch in dread.

When the entire room had moved to their respective side, I managed to turn and lock onto kind blue eyes, ignoring the dozens of others I knew really were staring at me.

The nausea intensified and I felt dizzy, my body hummed with electricity and adrenaline, I knew I had two choices, both of them almost equally unpleasant. I could either make more a scene, furthering the intense scrutiny currently on me, or I could follow the path I was always expected to take.

For a moment it occurred to me how stupidly ridiculous it all was, how easy it should be and was for everyone else; and the bizarre and unspoken-about privilege it revealed.

Then I thought of John, and the year-long admiration I’d had for him, how the blue eyes that sparkled now would dull to matt when he knew the reality hidden behind all the superficial masks I wore as daily makeup.

Then I thought of the rest of the audience; how they would gawk in shock or disgust and whisper among themselves. How they would leave at the end of the hour and spread the news like wildfire, destroying their general indifference that I’d earned for myself over the years, and instead start to _really_ treat me as the outsider I’d always known I was. I thought of the world like that; losing it’s last remnants of colour as they turned their backs on me and laughed mockingly at the recent news -that that smart-ass loner was now confirmed a freak.

But then I imagined the alternative; how the room would watch me drudge to my carved-out place and stand in a spot moulded to my shape. I thought of the simplicity in that torture, and how unbearably regular it would seem to almost anyone else. I imagined that stupid name being said over and over in my mind until it brought me to the edge and finally, inevitably tipped me over. How little anyone else would care; how unbearable common it would be.

Within a second I knew what to do, and I took a deep breath to steel myself. When I looked over unthinkingly to seek out the familiar sparkle of blue and a pretty dust of freckles, I was met by an expression that startled me into place momentarily.

Strong blue eyes bore into mine, a strange, almost ethereal look of understanding and encouragement coating his expression. He seemed to nod subtly and I pulled my gaze away and turned to face the front of the room in slow motion.

I took a deep breath, ignoring the shakiness in my voice and the adrenaline in my veins, I spoke, and suddenly time picked up its pace back to normal. ‘This is a poorly chosen and inconsiderate activity. And by the way: there are more than the two choices you have given us,’ and I marched over to the right with a lot more dignity than I felt I had.

**Author's Note:**

> So, there will be more of both of these stories (they'll be virtually identical again), but I've marked it as complete for now because any further chapters will be a while away.  
> Again, thank you for reading. Any comments and kudos left behind will be MAJORLY appreaciated ;)
> 
> Thanks


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